Basic Human Dignity Continued

If we can smugly marginalize those not working, a marginalization helped along by racial attitudes, the emergent structures of the job market make it difficult to apply the old standards of blame.  When 60 minutes features a panel of heretofore middle class people who have lost work, who desperately want to work, but because they have struggled to find work over an extended period of time, find themselves not only unemployed, but increasingly unemployable.  The 60 minutes panelists, black and white -- nearly all of whom looked comfortable in suits -- nearly all of whom were educated, well-spoken and professional -- nevertheless found themselves in line for food stamps.   Nearly all articulated well the sense of shame, the loss of recognition and personal identity that came with the loss of work, the nagging sense that "they are right, something must be wrong with me that I find myself in this situation, that I cannot extricate myself from this situation."  The likes of Herbert Caine as a viable (if only briefly) conservative presidential candidate points to the deeper structure, the persistent belief that, no matter the structural barriers, no matter the overt (and covert) bigotry, upward mobility is not only possible, but the likely reward for cleverness and hard work.  As many have pointed out, Caine has allowed conservatives to reassure themselves that it's not about race, rather it is about values, and people who are entangled in the socialist safety net and cannot extricate themselves are there because they lack some intrinsic quality.  For those with pluck (and here it helps to remind ourselves of the luck in pluck) it is possible that they will get ahead on the strength of initiative alone, and even more likely in the absence of the regulatory state's rolls of red tape.

The difficulty, of course, is that there is only the anecdotal exception to support the mythology of upward mobility.  It is still possible, though less and less likely.  In the recent issue of the New Republic, Timothy Noah writes, "when American's express indifference about the problem of unequal incomes, it's usually because they see the United States as a land of boundless opportunity," particularly compared to the likes of western Europe.  As he points out, however, it just isn't true.  "Most of western Europe today is both more equal in incomes and more economically mobile than the US."  Likewise, in a recent edition of the New York Times (Jan 4, 2012), Jason DeParle writes, "despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62% of American's (male and female) raised in th top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths."  He goes on to point out, that "similarly 65 percent of those born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths."  There is some residual mobility of the middle incomes, as DeParle reports, "even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped."  While it is encouraging that 36 percent of Americans have moved up, it is disturbing that slightly more Americans, 41 percent, are moving down into the bottom two-fifths.   There is as much, and slightly more, downward mobility.  I won't belabor the point, except to point out that, as income inequality increases, income mobility decreases. The mechanism may not be clear, but the correlation is clear enough and ominous.  It is worth pointing out that those in the bottom two-fifths, in sheer headcount, outnumber those in the top two-fifths by a considerable margin.  At what point will the majority of Americans be low income, and poor?

To be Continued 
   

Basic Human Dignity Continued

Labor is redemptive on any number of levels, but there are at least two that concern me.  First and foremost, of course, work is wholly pragmatic.  I have suggested elsewhere, mostly in accord with common sense, that there are basic human drives, basic human imperatives that must be brought to resolution.  If one wants to take a Darwinian tack on it, they are those biological drives that must be satisfied for survival, and for the present purposes, it is enough to think in those basic terms, in part because it is difficult, if not wholly impossible, to imagine something like basic human dignity where one is deprived of the instrumental means of fulfilling those basic driving imperatives -- food, clothing, shelter.  One works, at the most fundamental level, to earn a living, and work redeems one from the life of penury and want that is most destructive of basic human dignity.  Second, it is not difficult to imagine how work might be socially organizing.   Imagine the on-going life of a hunting and gathering tribe.  The link between one's innate ability and character, one's ability and willingness to hunt or to gather, had an immediate impact, not only on one's own survival, but on the survival of the tribe.  Imagine too the on-going life of early agrarian societies.  In any hard scrabble existence, one imagines no lack of opportunity for work.  One imagines rather an almost universal approbation of work, an almost universal disapprobation of sloth, and if differentiating roles emerged in the nature of work, they were the differentiated roles of gender, for women the labor of child bearing and child rearing, and for men the labor of provision.  Although more a mythology than anthropology, it is nevertheless a mythology of some standing, an understanding of man's lot in life as least as old as Genesis -- "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to your husband and he shall rule over thee" -- "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread."  Labor is redemptive, not only in the immediate and pragmatic sense, but it is the curse levied by God for disobedience, and as such, submission to the conditions of life imposed by God provided the path to recognition and redemption not only in God's eyes, but in man's eyes.  The hard working man, in short, is recognized as the good man, and here again, it is difficult, if not wholly impossible to imagine something like basic human dignity where one is wholly deprived of the means to achieve approbation and recognition.

To be continued